The Little Things Mean A Lot

Five Cubic Courses, Hors d'Oeuvre

Welcome to the epicurean experience of the season, a limited interlude featuring a truly passionate champion of the art form. I’m going to be serving a five course meal that will leave you a little Fuller each week. Those who have met Eric Fuller, the original Raleigh Renegade in person, may have been struck by his stylish haircut, his boyish enthusiasm for adventure, his razor sharp intellect, or his congenial and openminded nature. The man behind the myth was born in Colorado and moved around a lot in his youth, from San Diego, to Luxembourg, to the seaside town of Noordwijk in Holland where he attended the American School of the Hague. He still speaks fluent Dutch! He came back to the states at seventeen to finish high school in Dallas, Texas and then joined the marines. He was stationed in Okinawa with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, then transferred to the Marine Corps Air Station in Camp Pendleton. After serving his country he worked in IT, got a business degree and around the same time started collecting puzzles. That quickly led to making puzzles, simple burrs using a hand saw and chisel on his kitchen table. He traded with other collectors, and fell in love with woodworking. He moved to a small house with a one car garage just so he could have a workshop with power tools. He recalls that the first puzzle he made for sale around 2003 was his deviously perfect Pack Six.

Since then his small business, Cubic Dissection, has grown in focus and prestige. A lot of his success, indeed his very brand, has to do with precision. About twenty years ago, Eric obtained a classic Japanese puzzle box. It was a typical affair with 27 moves. Most will be at least somewhat familiar with these classic boxes, often covered in geometric yosegi marquetry and requiring the sliding of side panels in sequence to open. Many of us similarly began our love affair with puzzle boxes in the same fashion. I once wrote about these boxes and the skill of one of the great Japanese masters of the art, Okiyama-san. I’ll quote myself: “It can be confusing for Westerners or Europeans to understand the sizing of Japanese puzzle boxes, which are still measured using Japan’s original system of measurement, the shakkanhō, despite the adoption of the metric system throughout modern Japan. The shaku is the main unit of length, similar to the Western “foot”. Much like the foot, which was originally based on the length of that body part, the shaku was the length from the thumb to the middle finger, and now equals approximately 12 inches (the same size as 1 foot, for my European friends). Other units derive from there as fractions of 10. Japanese puzzle boxes are traditionally measured in units of “sun”, which is 1/10th of a shaku, or approximately 1.2 inches (3 cm). The tiniest of boxes, known as “mame” (“bean”) are 1 sun in length. Larger boxes hold more moves, for example a 7 sun box (21 cm, about 8 inches) which can have up to 54 steps. Okiyama’s famous masterpiece, the 122 move box, more than doubled the steps while keeping the box almost the same size, by shrinking the “steps” – literally step-like components hidden inside the box, which create the movement patterns. The steps in the 122 move box are approximately 7 “rin” (1/100th sun) or about 1-2mm each.  He was truly a master of the art.”

This history lesson is important in order to have a fuller understanding of what Eric did next. A few years after discovering that puzzle box, and very early in his new career, he realized that in order to set himself and his work apart, he needed proof of his meticulous attention to detail, skill and precision work. Large boxes don’t need as much precision, are easier to produce, and may often appear to be worth more to a consumer simply based on size. Eric wanted to demonstrate that the opposite can be true. He focused on the smallest sized Japanese puzzle box, the mame box, which means “bean”. Perhaps the small size resembles a little bean, or perhaps that is the only thing that can fit inside one, but whatever the case may be, these boxes clearly require more skill to craft because of their tiny size. Most mame boxes therefore have only a few “steps” required to open, but the most complex can have up to fourteen. Eric realized that by placing steps on the top and bottom panels as well, rather than only on the sides as was tradition, he could increase the number of moves. He then reduced the size of the actual steps down to 1/25,000 of an inch – less than 1mm! His final mame boxes, made from Honduras Mahogany and Indian Rosewood, are incredibly tiny and require no less than thirty moves to open, a record that would make Mr. Okiyama proud. As one of the first boxes he ever made, it remains sentimental and special to him. The mame box validated his skill and vision, and led to everything else.

To toast the mame box and Eric Fuller’s achievement and contribution to the ancient art, I have a special cocktail. For a “bean” box, we need some bean booze, of course. Coffee bean booze, specifically, which is no random choice for this box either, and has a special significance, which I will not elucidate but rather allow to rattle around in your mind. I actually created this cocktail as my entry into last year’s “Home Bartender of the Year” competition finals, which I was lucky enough to achieve even though I didn’t win. It’s still a winning drink!

For the competition, finalists were tasked with creating a highball style drink with amaro in the spirit of the classic “Americano”. That drink, a favorite of Italian café society locals and later, visiting Americans, originated in 1860’s Milan where one of it’s main ingredients, Campari, was invented. Adding sweet vermouth and club soda completes the drink. For this version, I chose a robust coffee amaro liqueur roasted with Sumatra beans and aged in a whiskey barrel. My wife tells a story about her grandfather, who loved to drink his espresso along with lemon granita. That incredible flavor combination was the impetus for this drink. To the coffee amaro I added a mix of lemony spirits, a split of the delicious bergamot liqueur Italicus and the gentian French aperitif Suze, with its soft citrus notes. I tied it all together with a few dashes of Bittermen's Boston Bittahs, which add a touch more citrus and a lovely layer of chamomile. Topped with soda on ice, it’s a perfect summer sipper that will transport you. Since I created the drink right after the 2020 election the name became a crafty coffee play on words and the drink got a pair of signature aviators. Cheers!

Sleepy Joe

2 oz Caffe Amaro

½ oz Italicus

½ oz Suze

2 dashes Bittermen’s Boston Bittahs

Club soda

Build ingredients over ice in a tall glass and top with the soda water. Lemon peel aviator sunglasses garnish.

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